McCrory adds two local residents to Tryon Palace Commission

Published: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 07:02 PM.

Gov. Pat McCrory has tapped two young New Bern area residents for two of the 10 at-large seats opening this year on the Tryon Palace Commission.

The new appointees are Stephanie Morris, a Kinston native and longtime Trent Woods resident, and John C. Bircher III, a Columbia, S.C., native who grew up in Cove City and who now lives and works in New Bern.

Both bring strong skills to the commission, which is charged by the General Assembly with making the Tryon Palace complex more self-sufficient in addition to its primary mission of engaging present and future generations in North Carolina history from early settlement and statehood through the mid-20th century.

“I am excited and humbled,” Morris said of the appointment she sees and an invitation to work at something she believes critical to the area. “We have the wonderful new facility, N.C. History Center, and it is so important to support it if we want New Bern to grow and thrive.”

Morris, a 1986 North Carolina Scholar and graduate of Kinston High School, earned a bachelor's degree in business administration at East Carolina in 1990, the same year she was named Miss Kinston. She began her professional career asan agent for actors in television and film, working with Century Artists Limited in Beverly Hills, Calif.

After meeting New Bern businessman Kenneth E. Morris III, who she married in 1997 and with whom she now has two daughters, Morris moved back to Kinston and worked for more than a decade as physician recruitment coordinator for Lenoir Memorial Hospital. She also got North Carolina licenses in Property and Casualty, Life, Accident and Health, and Medicare Supplement insurance.

A member of First Presbyterian Church and an active parent at Arendell Parrott Academy, Morris has been a board member of Craven Arts Council and Gallery and was a volunteer in the New Bern/Craven County 300th celebrations.

Gov. Pat McCrory has tapped two young New Bern area residents for two of the 10 at-large seats opening this year on the Tryon Palace Commission.

The new appointees are Stephanie Morris, a Kinston native and longtime Trent Woods resident, and John C. Bircher III, a Columbia, S.C., native who grew up in Cove City and who now lives and works in New Bern.

Both bring strong skills to the commission, which is charged by the General Assembly with making the Tryon Palace complex more self-sufficient in addition to its primary mission of engaging present and future generations in North Carolina history from early settlement and statehood through the mid-20th century.

“I am excited and humbled,” Morris said of the appointment she sees and an invitation to work at something she believes critical to the area. “We have the wonderful new facility, N.C. History Center, and it is so important to support it if we want New Bern to grow and thrive.”

Morris, a 1986 North Carolina Scholar and graduate of Kinston High School, earned a bachelor's degree in business administration at East Carolina in 1990, the same year she was named Miss Kinston. She began her professional career asan agent for actors in television and film, working with Century Artists Limited in Beverly Hills, Calif.

After meeting New Bern businessman Kenneth E. Morris III, who she married in 1997 and with whom she now has two daughters, Morris moved back to Kinston and worked for more than a decade as physician recruitment coordinator for Lenoir Memorial Hospital. She also got North Carolina licenses in Property and Casualty, Life, Accident and Health, and Medicare Supplement insurance.

A member of First Presbyterian Church and an active parent at Arendell Parrott Academy, Morris has been a board member of Craven Arts Council and Gallery and was a volunteer in the New Bern/Craven County 300th celebrations.

Bircher is an attorney with the law firm of White & Allen, P.A. He got his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then his Juris Doctor in 1997 from Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law at Campbell University. He is licensed to practice before all state and federal courts in North Carolina, in the Northern District of Georgia and the state courts of Tennessee.

Bircher, who practices in the firm’s New Bern office, has impressive credentials, particularly related to bankruptcy law in which he is certified as a Specialist in Business and Consumer Bankruptcy Law by the N.C. State Bar Board of Legal Specialization.

In 2011 and 2012, he was selected as a North Carolina Super Lawyer in that area, and in 2010 and 2013 named to Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in the bankruptcy area.

Thus far, McCrory reappointed two seated members, named four new members including Bircher and Morris, and has four remaining appointments to the commission.